Khodorkovsky’s Mistake? by James Kimer

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Communications Center

From time to time, I come across negative or unflattering portrayals of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and skewed presentations of the series of events which led to his eventual status as a political prisoner of the Russian government.(*) It’s only natural in such a politically charged case, especially in light of the persecution campaign by opponents to damage his character and legitimize the theft of YUKOS.

However even among the most cynical of these groups, there usually is very little debate over the absurdity of the legal process itself. Even if one is not a supporter of Khodorkovsky, it is quite difficult to explain how he can be convicted of tax evasion in one trial and then only to be charged in a second trial with having stole all the oil that this tax would have been based on. Or the guiding rationale behind mounting the false trial and hounding witnesses (such as the medical blackmail of Vasily Aleksanyan), if it were actually possible to try a real case upon real evidence. It just doesn’t withstand serious consideration, nor does it address the fact of the multi-billion dollar theft of the country’s largest oil company in the process.

Instead, many choose to look toward the decisions of Khodorkovsky himself in the years leading up to the YUKOS Affair, arguing that he “miscalculated” the situation, believed he was “untouchable” given his influence, or it had somehow otherwise been his fault for failing to understand the arbitrary, lawless reach of executive power in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

One example of this trend is featured in a recent book review by Keith Gessen in the London Review of Books – which although I believe is exceedingly fair, thorough, well written and considerate of diverse viewpoints – also falls into the blame-the-victim tendency:

Watching the interview, it’s impossible to tell whether he really cares nothing for his freedom or whether he just can’t believe he’ll be arrested. He is the richest man in Russia, one of the richest in the world. A week before he had had a meeting with Dick Cheney. That this kind of access, and prominence, can’t guarantee you immunity is hard to believe. Perhaps he really couldn’t believe it until a group of special forces, in ski masks and armed to the teeth, stormed his plane on the tarmac of a Siberian airport in October and arrested him. For the first week after his arrest, his cellmates would later report, he was in a state of shock. He refused food, lay on his cot, and seemed to be thinking `very hard about something.’

Another reiteration of the “Khodorkovsky mistake” can be seen in a recent article by Moscow journalist John Helmer (similarly to Keith Gessen’s article, the journalist clearly understands the persecutory nature of the trial, but “the mistake” is the clearest explanation of motive):

The difference [between other oligarchs and MBK] is that Khodorkovsky tried to sell his Russian oil assets to an American oil company directly, after being told at the Kremlin that he shouldn’t. Khodorkovsky made the mistake of thinking that he owned Yukos, and could do what owners think they can do. He forgot what warlords and concessionaires forget at their peril: power and wealth are the gift that keeps on giving – if you don’t want to keep on giving, run for your life.

Essentially the central conclusion of many portrayals of the case is that “he should have known better” than to trust in Russia’s judicial independence. The narrative proposes that he was “naive” when he decided not to leave Russia (though he had many chances), believing instead that because the company had rigorously paid taxes and operated in a most transparent fashion.

This line of argument is very troubling because it suggests that one should go to jail and face whatever consequence if they happen to believe in Russia and its ability to independently administer justice. An innocent person does not flee the scene of an accident in a normal rule of law country, a businessman should not assume that the government has the unacknowledged right can steal his property in broad daylight, and a patriot does not contribute to his or her nation by succumbing to the lowest forces of corruption which control it. But to commit to these principles, the conclusion suggests, is to welcome your own undoing – instead of fighting the nature of the problem itself.

At the end of the day, perhaps we are only debating details and focusing on the insignificant. Nevertheless, the core values questions provoked by the Khodorkovsky experience, and the idea that the motivation for the whole series of events somehow arose from his own mistakes. If Russia continues to feature a 19th century Tsarist property system, whereby business ownership is only allowed by permission of the state, then this had better be made clear and cut in stone before the next investor makes another tragic mistake.

Khodorkovsky believed that Russia was modernizing, open, free and fair, and that the only way this prophecy could be fulfilled was if people were to begin to treat it as such – especially through his own actions at such a critical moment. This is one vision shared identically by the current leadership, at least in their statements lauding the positive business environment, the campaign against legal nihilism, and Russia’s support for international law as the backbone of the new multilateral order.

But standing in between these two visions of what Russia should become lies this imagined “mistake” of Khodorkovsky.

By James Kimer, Guest Commentator to the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Communications Center ___________________________________________________

(*) This commentary hits the nail on the head. So many articles that one reads these days about Khodorkovsky tend to say pretty much the same thing, to the effect that in the early stages of his career he was naive, or culpably arrogant, or in some way guilty of vague and unspecified crimes but with no real, credible evidence being produced. The reality is that he is extremely bright, and foresaw with unusual clarity that he was going to be arrested but chose not to flee (which to me inevitably recalls the choice made by Jesus Christ in the garden of Gethsemane). By his choice he declared himself to be a true Russian patriot. This makes Khodorkovsky the most honourable of political prisoners, a true hero for our times. And this is what motivates his many supporters in Russia and abroad.  JP